I played SOMA recently, for the first time ever and sadly had no end of technical issues when I tried to play this game. I don’t know if it’s something to do with my PS4 or it’s the copy of the game I own. But they were game-breaking because I couldn’t get past the part where Catherine tells Simon to get to the tram. It would either freeze or stay stuck on a black screen with all the controls and UI functional. I tried restarting my PS4, but that didn’t work. I could’ve probably done more to try and fix it but I really couldn’t be bothered at that point. So basically this is the first part of a few wherein I talk about how much I was able to play through.

I’m a huge fan of Frictional Games work. My first experience with their games was Amnesia: The Dark Descent. I found people playing it on Youtube and I loved watching their reactions. It’s what made me want to experience it for myself. Of course since I had watched numerous playthroughs from my favourite Youtubers, I knew my way through which probably made the game a lot less scary for me. I loved the environment designs and the monsters. I loved how twisted the story became and how it made you question your actions. I love their attention to detail with the environments and how they drip feed you the story through the gameplay.

It’s what made me pre-order the next in the series: A Machine For Pigs. I played part way through the Penumbra series while waiting, to see the origins of their horror game development. And I can definitely say, Amnesia was a big improvement in terms of atmosphere compared to the Penumbra series. I loved A Machine For Pigs when it was released. I didn’t find it that scary and compared to The Dark Descent, the gameplay wasn’t that great (I might write about why in a blog post later). I loved the story and I think The Chinese Room is great with writing a compelling story and creating beautiful environments. So when Soma was announced, I was interested. I followed all the promotional videos that they released on their site, and I was hooked.

Basically I went into the game just knowing what they used to market the game. I preordered it as soon as it was announced and it’s only now that I’ve been able to get the chance to play it for myself. Which is why I’m a little disappointed that it wouldn’t work for me and because I really wanted to know what it was about, I went and watched some gameplay videos of it after giving up. So now I know the whole story and I regret not trying harder to get it to work.

I have no idea when this was written but it was after I wrote ‘I’m Not Scared’. That story basically established Adam and Peter as my own original characters and I started making up proper backstories for them. Adam is a serial killer, I had a weird fascination with them… Probably because of the Dexter TV-show? Anyway onto the story, this one is pretty gruesome.Read more of this post